The guardianship of the catacombs was confided to a certain body of the clergy, who went under the name of _fossores_, or grave-diggers. ❋ Various (N/A)
Thus in the first centuries there figured in the ranks of the clergy notaries, defensores ecclesiae, oeconomi, catechists, cantors, fossores (for the cemeteries), etc., to say nothing of deaconesses. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Readers were blessed and set apart, as were the fossores who dug graves, the notarii who kept registers, and widows. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Besides the psalmista or cantor, several other functionaries seem to have been recognized as holding orders, e.g., fossarii (fossores) grave diggers, hermeneutoe ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
In Christian antiquity, it is true, especially among the Greek Christians, we meet with many subordinate functionaries, e.g. singers ( "cantores", or "confessores"); "parabolani", who cared for the sick; "copiatæ" (fossores), or sextons who buried the dead; ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Priests are frequently mentioned, and reference is often made to deacons, subdeacons, exorcists, lectors, acolytes, fossores or grave-diggers, alumni or adopted children. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
The minutes of the search at Cirta, which we have already cited, were read and witnesses were called to establish their accuracy, including two of the fossores then present and a lector, Victor the grammarian. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Having arrived with his satellites at the bishop's house -- in Numidia the searching was more severe than in Proconsular Africa -- the bishop was found with four priests, three deacons, four subdeacons, and several fossores (diggers). ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Christians felt themselves secure in the catacombs, yet the laying out of the galleries, the burying of the bodies, the odour of decay, and the pestilential air in summer, made the lives of the fossores, or excavators, one of the greatest self-sacrifice, while visiting the graves of the departed became much more difficult for the surviving members of families. ❋ 1840-1916 (1913)
Some of the loculi were closed with tiles, others with pagan inscriptions which the _fossores_ had found by chance in tunnelling their way into the crypt. ❋ Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani (1888)
This fatal year marks the end of a great and glorious era in Christian epigraphy, and in the history of catacombs the end of the work of the _fossores_. ❋ Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani (1888)
Pushing away the grim fossores, the grave-diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, and chanted that old psalm of theirs -- Laudate pueri dominum! ❋ Walter Pater (1866)
Sunt enim loca e quibus si hoc anno sulphur effossum fuerit; intermissa fossione per quadriennium redeunt fossores & omnia sulphure, ut autea [Errata: antea], rursus inveniunt plena. ❋ Robert Boyle (1659)
Nam si effossio spatio centum annorum intermittebatur, & iterum illuc revertebantur, fossores reperisse maximam copiam ferri regeneratam. ❋ Robert Boyle (1659)
_Metalli fossores_, 1. ingrediuntur _Puteum fodinæ_, 2. ❋ Johann Amos Comenius (1631)
The passage from one to the other had been most ingeniously disguised by the _fossores_, as those who dug the catacombs were called. [ ❋ Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani (1888)
